by Dr. Cecil Clements (6th November 2012)
For many of us, we have seen our daughters, as they’ve gone into their early teens, how they have loved to play with their Barbie dolls. Barbie dolls have been around for so many years and have been such an integral part of a young girl’s play kit. Mattel brought out the Barbie and it was a huge success as they carved into a niche that girls needed as they got into their teens, to have a sophisticated doll.
One of the things that they failed to realize was that young girls were slowly beginning to want to see more of their role models or idols visible in these dolls. Also, the age group of the girls interested in Barbie’s was narrowing from 3-11 to now 3-5. They didn’t see it because of the popularity of Barbie. They had the market share for 40 years. But MGA saw it and MGA Entertainment brought out a new line of dolls called BRATZ. They targeted this niche. Before Mattel knew what was happening, between 2001 and 2004, they lost 20% of the share of the worldwide fashion doll segment to MGA Entertainment. Queen of dolls for 40 years and they lost a fifth of their realm almost overnight! The thing is that Mattel didn’t see it coming.
Psychologists have a term called availability heuristic. Basically it means: if you can think of it, it must be important. What availability heuristic really does is that it blinds you to things that are happening outside, far away from you, or in your peripheral vision. If you get too focused, you can miss what is happening on the outside. For example, if you were to ask people around you who use smart phones – they’re all talking about the iPhone or the android-based smart phone. You come to the conclusion that these are the phones that are making it all across the world. That’s the danger of availability heuristic – to take a small amount of data that you are seeing around and make it a general statement on which to progress.
I read this interesting article by George Day and Paul Schoemaker entitled ‘Scanning the Periphery’. They say, “The biggest dangers to a company are the ones you don’t see coming. Understanding these threats and anticipating opportunities requires strong peripheral vision.”
Scott Anthony writes an article that is very interesting in this whole smart phone arena. It is entitled ‘RIM Isn’t Dead Yet’ (Research In Motion). He says, “While everybody is focusing on Apple and the android-based smart phones, in September, RIM reported that its subscriber base had grown to 80 million from 78 million. The company’s market share is still decreasing. But companies on death’s door don’t tend to report sales growth. Everybody seems to have written off the Blackberry.”
Basically he is saying, if you live in the San Francisco area, everybody is talking about the android-based or the Apple phone. But when you travel around the world, then you begin to see that there are things that Blackberry brings that other phones don’t, in spite of the many apps that they have. He gives an illustration. He says that when he was travelling from Newark to Singapore, an 18-hour flight. Singapore Airlines has started rolling out Internet connectivity on this flight. It isn’t cheap; runs probably $1 per megabyte of data. I didn’t dare turn on my iPhone or open up Outlook, but I thought going to Webmail would be safe. 15 minutes later, I had a $15.30 bill. Then I remembered the Blackberry in my bag. I connected it to the Wi-Fi network and roughly 14 hours of email connectivity. By the end of the trip, my bill had gone from $15.30 to $15.45, just a 15 cent raise.”
He says, “When you begin to look at Philippines and Indonesia and other markets in the Asia-Pacific belt, you’ll find that Blackberry has stuff that other phones are still not able to give. What we need to be very careful as we look at market trends is to avoid the availability heuristic. The only way to avoid that pitfall is to be able to spend time on the periphery.”
He writes another article called ‘Trend Hunting On The Periphery’ where he basically says, “Companies that really look into the future, that make sure that they are understanding the trends, do this very diligently.” He says he was in Beijing and he noticed a company there that had no work in Beijing. They weren’t even planning to start operations there. But they had a team of people just moving around Beijing and just watching the trends that were up. He says, “That is what you and I need to do. Sometimes we can get so myopic in our focus that we forget about trends that are very innocent. Transformation starts innocently, but then they rapidly bring change and often you are blind-sided, just like Mattel was with the Barbie doll.”
When you get into a race, one of the things that you need to be very aware of is your peripheral vision. It is this that allows you to notice a runner catching up on you. You cannot afford to have blinkers or blinders as horses do, just to keep them focused and not distracted by other things happening on the side. You and I need to get our blinkers and blinders off. That’s the only way we would see people coming alongside of us. Often companies get blind-sided. You lose stuff that you shouldn’t have lost and then you begin to wonder how that happened and why.
George Day and Paul Schoemaker have on their website what they call ‘A Strategic Eye Exam’ and you can take this exam and it is validated immediately there itself. It will give you a good idea of whether that’s the kind of outlook that you or your company has or needs to have.
In that same article ‘Scanning The Periphery’ they make this comment. “Organon was testing some drugs for antihistamines to help people with hay fever and other allergies. The drug failed in its tests. But a secretary, who was helping to administer the trials, noted that some of the volunteers were particularly cheerful. This was a weak signal – to notice this kind of behavior. Normally it would have remained isolated at the periphery in many organizations. But the secretary, who recognized its potential significance, brought it to the attention of the managers. Through further research, the company discovered that this new drug was in fact, an effective treatment for depression. And Organon successfully developed the drug and in 1974, marketed it as Tolvon.”
Most organizations, they say, have maverick employees with insights about the periphery. But usually these individuals are rarely tapped. I wonder whether that’s what you and I need today. I’ve just come out of a Thanksgiving weekend. I am so thankful for the many blessings in my life. As I was reflecting on our call today, I was thinking that I am so thankful that God too, uses His peripheral vision. One of the things that I was reminded of was that God really reached out to me, even when I didn’t seem reachable, even when I didn’t seem attractive to Him. Yet His peripheral vision wanted to draw me to Him. He saw other things just beyond the bad or the not so good things that I was doing. He reached out to me and made a path for me to find Him.
What a beautiful thought! God does it and He’s placed that thought in our lives too. We can use it even in our scope, our companies, in our areas of work – to think peripherally so that we’re not taken by surprise.
I hope that’s a good word for you in your areas of work.
Let me pray for you. Almighty God, to each one of these precious ones on this call, give wisdom. Give eyes that see peripherally, to notice trends. That as they become people who are watching, they will be able to enhance the value that they bring to their companies so that they can be a blessing to the companies. Help us to have a wonderful day, in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
For many of us, we have seen our daughters, as they’ve gone into their early teens, how they have loved to play with their Barbie dolls. Barbie dolls have been around for so many years and have been such an integral part of a young girl’s play kit. Mattel brought out the Barbie and it was a huge success as they carved into a niche that girls needed as they got into their teens, to have a sophisticated doll.
One of the things that they failed to realize was that young girls were slowly beginning to want to see more of their role models or idols visible in these dolls. Also, the age group of the girls interested in Barbie’s was narrowing from 3-11 to now 3-5. They didn’t see it because of the popularity of Barbie. They had the market share for 40 years. But MGA saw it and MGA Entertainment brought out a new line of dolls called BRATZ. They targeted this niche. Before Mattel knew what was happening, between 2001 and 2004, they lost 20% of the share of the worldwide fashion doll segment to MGA Entertainment. Queen of dolls for 40 years and they lost a fifth of their realm almost overnight! The thing is that Mattel didn’t see it coming.
Psychologists have a term called availability heuristic. Basically it means: if you can think of it, it must be important. What availability heuristic really does is that it blinds you to things that are happening outside, far away from you, or in your peripheral vision. If you get too focused, you can miss what is happening on the outside. For example, if you were to ask people around you who use smart phones – they’re all talking about the iPhone or the android-based smart phone. You come to the conclusion that these are the phones that are making it all across the world. That’s the danger of availability heuristic – to take a small amount of data that you are seeing around and make it a general statement on which to progress.
I read this interesting article by George Day and Paul Schoemaker entitled ‘Scanning the Periphery’. They say, “The biggest dangers to a company are the ones you don’t see coming. Understanding these threats and anticipating opportunities requires strong peripheral vision.”
Scott Anthony writes an article that is very interesting in this whole smart phone arena. It is entitled ‘RIM Isn’t Dead Yet’ (Research In Motion). He says, “While everybody is focusing on Apple and the android-based smart phones, in September, RIM reported that its subscriber base had grown to 80 million from 78 million. The company’s market share is still decreasing. But companies on death’s door don’t tend to report sales growth. Everybody seems to have written off the Blackberry.”
Basically he is saying, if you live in the San Francisco area, everybody is talking about the android-based or the Apple phone. But when you travel around the world, then you begin to see that there are things that Blackberry brings that other phones don’t, in spite of the many apps that they have. He gives an illustration. He says that when he was travelling from Newark to Singapore, an 18-hour flight. Singapore Airlines has started rolling out Internet connectivity on this flight. It isn’t cheap; runs probably $1 per megabyte of data. I didn’t dare turn on my iPhone or open up Outlook, but I thought going to Webmail would be safe. 15 minutes later, I had a $15.30 bill. Then I remembered the Blackberry in my bag. I connected it to the Wi-Fi network and roughly 14 hours of email connectivity. By the end of the trip, my bill had gone from $15.30 to $15.45, just a 15 cent raise.”
He says, “When you begin to look at Philippines and Indonesia and other markets in the Asia-Pacific belt, you’ll find that Blackberry has stuff that other phones are still not able to give. What we need to be very careful as we look at market trends is to avoid the availability heuristic. The only way to avoid that pitfall is to be able to spend time on the periphery.”
He writes another article called ‘Trend Hunting On The Periphery’ where he basically says, “Companies that really look into the future, that make sure that they are understanding the trends, do this very diligently.” He says he was in Beijing and he noticed a company there that had no work in Beijing. They weren’t even planning to start operations there. But they had a team of people just moving around Beijing and just watching the trends that were up. He says, “That is what you and I need to do. Sometimes we can get so myopic in our focus that we forget about trends that are very innocent. Transformation starts innocently, but then they rapidly bring change and often you are blind-sided, just like Mattel was with the Barbie doll.”
When you get into a race, one of the things that you need to be very aware of is your peripheral vision. It is this that allows you to notice a runner catching up on you. You cannot afford to have blinkers or blinders as horses do, just to keep them focused and not distracted by other things happening on the side. You and I need to get our blinkers and blinders off. That’s the only way we would see people coming alongside of us. Often companies get blind-sided. You lose stuff that you shouldn’t have lost and then you begin to wonder how that happened and why.
George Day and Paul Schoemaker have on their website what they call ‘A Strategic Eye Exam’ and you can take this exam and it is validated immediately there itself. It will give you a good idea of whether that’s the kind of outlook that you or your company has or needs to have.
In that same article ‘Scanning The Periphery’ they make this comment. “Organon was testing some drugs for antihistamines to help people with hay fever and other allergies. The drug failed in its tests. But a secretary, who was helping to administer the trials, noted that some of the volunteers were particularly cheerful. This was a weak signal – to notice this kind of behavior. Normally it would have remained isolated at the periphery in many organizations. But the secretary, who recognized its potential significance, brought it to the attention of the managers. Through further research, the company discovered that this new drug was in fact, an effective treatment for depression. And Organon successfully developed the drug and in 1974, marketed it as Tolvon.”
Most organizations, they say, have maverick employees with insights about the periphery. But usually these individuals are rarely tapped. I wonder whether that’s what you and I need today. I’ve just come out of a Thanksgiving weekend. I am so thankful for the many blessings in my life. As I was reflecting on our call today, I was thinking that I am so thankful that God too, uses His peripheral vision. One of the things that I was reminded of was that God really reached out to me, even when I didn’t seem reachable, even when I didn’t seem attractive to Him. Yet His peripheral vision wanted to draw me to Him. He saw other things just beyond the bad or the not so good things that I was doing. He reached out to me and made a path for me to find Him.
What a beautiful thought! God does it and He’s placed that thought in our lives too. We can use it even in our scope, our companies, in our areas of work – to think peripherally so that we’re not taken by surprise.
I hope that’s a good word for you in your areas of work.
Let me pray for you. Almighty God, to each one of these precious ones on this call, give wisdom. Give eyes that see peripherally, to notice trends. That as they become people who are watching, they will be able to enhance the value that they bring to their companies so that they can be a blessing to the companies. Help us to have a wonderful day, in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
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